“If you are unable to find truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
– DŌGEN

Most of us live our lives in a continuous state of moving toward happiness and away from pain. We believe what we have is never enough, and our continual efforts to grasp the “next best thing” that we think will make us happy inevitably leads to suffering.

As long as we continue to see happiness as a state that can only be found by getting something outside of ourselves, as long as we continue to experience endless cycles of acceptance and rejection, desiring and not desiring, pushing in one direction and pulling in another, we will never experience lasting happiness.

Living in a three-dimensional world makes us believe in the illusion that there is a “me” in direct opposition to an “other” that is outside of us. This “other” can be people, places, circumstances and objects of all kinds.

It’s hard for us to view the world in any other way but this one.

The search for happiness will be never-ending as long as we believe there is a “me” in here and an “everything else” out there. Suffering is guaranteed to continue as long as we insist on viewing the world in these dualistic terms.

At some point in our personal journeys, we start to see the impossibility of such a dualistic set-up. We want to be free of the paradox. We want an end to our suffering. We hear about this thing called “enlightenment” and we think, “Aha, this will be my ticket out!” and so begins the search for enlightenment.

But what is this elusive state called enlightenment?